


Who Frowned Me This Face?

by lightspire



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Minor Character Death, One Shot, Sequel, The Fires of Pompeii
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 14:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3071795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightspire/pseuds/lightspire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara finally learns where the Doctor got his current face, and Lobus Caecilius gets a visit from an old friend. Sequel to The Fires of Pompeii. This story takes place a few weeks after Last Christmas.</p><p>Inspired by this quote: “Si Dieu nous a faits à son image, nous le lui avons bien rendu.” – Voltaire, Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750). Translation: If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Frowned Me This Face?

“So! Where to now, Doctor?”

Clara had to shout a little to be heard over the sounds of David Bowie’s _Starman_ blaring from the TARDIS speakers. The Doctor sometimes liked to listen to music while he worked, and Clara had always been fascinated by each incarnation’s varied tastes. The last one had enjoyed everything from Muse to rap and opera, while the one before that liked the Beatles and Ian Dury, but this one – well, this one was just a little bit punk. A two thousand year old, teenage rebel, punk, Clara thought to herself, and smiled.

She watched him as he worked, hunched over a nearby table. He wore his signature crimson-lined jacket over a matching waistcoat backed with cinnabar-colored silk, and beneath that, a crisp white shirt with French cuffs that was buttoned in the front all the way to the collar. Black trousers and lace-up boots completed his sartorial ensemble. He sat perched on the edge of a white plastic Bauhaus-style chair, his long slender legs tucked under the table, deep in concentration, tinkering. In his left hand he held an extraordinary gadget -- a jumble of gears, wires and unidentifiable crystalline shapes -- while in his right hand he wielded an ordinary, old-fashioned wood-handled screwdriver.

He was so deeply focused on his work that Clara wasn’t sure he’d heard her. She walked around the TARDIS’ central console towards him, trailing her fingers lightly over the buttons and levers, then moved right up next to him, and leaned over his shoulder. She spoke again, just inches from his ear.

“Doctor, did you hear me?” she asked.

She was close enough that she could smell the warm, masculine mixture of sandalwood and bay rum from his new aftershave that she’d given him as a belated Christmas gift, and she smiled to herself when she realized that he’d actually put it on. When he’d asked her about the scent, she had told him that long-ago sailors on Earth had favored it as they plied their clipper ships across vast oceans; and since he was a sailor of the interstellar voids, she thought it might suit him. He had grinned at that, thanked her, and tucked the small bottle into one of his infinitely deep pockets.

The Doctor stopped fiddling and looked up at her through his steampunk-style goggles. He reached forward and flicked a switch, silencing the music, then flipped up the lenses of his glasses and regarded her.

“Of course I heard you.” He tapped his right ear. “I hear everything. Timelord senses and all that.”

Clara huffed, narrowed her eyes a bit and said, “So. You were just being rude then?”

He frowned at her.

“Well?” she asked, then folded her arms and looked at him expectantly.

He ignored her dig at him and answered her original question instead. “Remember how I told you that it was time I fixed some of my many mistakes from the past?” he asked, gesturing with the point of the screwdriver.

“Yeah…?” Clara looked at him a little warily.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” he said, carelessly tossing everything onto the worktable in front of him. He took off the goggles and set them down, too, then ran both hands back and forth a few times through his silver curls, ruffling his hair. He rubbed his eyes, and scratched at the back of his head.

“Uh oh … you’re thinking again … watch out Universe,” she teased, secretly mesmerized by his long fingers as they buried themselves in his hair.

“Shush, you,” he replied with mock seriousness, touching a finger briefly to her lips. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to do. Someone I need to thank … and incidentally, someone you need to meet.” 

He stood up and began to move around the console, his red-lined coat flaring a bit as he quickly activated gears, levers, and buttons, getting ready to send them spiraling off into their next escapade. Clara’s pulse quickened with excitement as she watched his deft, confident hands fly over the controls; she always loved this bit … the moment of anticipation before a new adventure began.

“Ooh, sounds mysterious,” she said playfully, smiling, and leaned towards him, both hands gripping the console lightly.

“Well, I _am_ a man of mystery,” he smiled back, passing close behind her and brushing her back lightly with his hand, as he continued moving around the console. “But really. There’s a thing I need to do. I’ve put it off too long.”

“So -- this person I’m supposed to meet,” Clara began, “Will she be someone I like?” She cocked her head to one side, and added, “Will I be jealous?”

The Doctor stopped what he was doing and looked at her, his expression inscrutable. “I’m pretty sure it’s a he. And … I’m not sure how to answer the rest. Wait until you meet him – then you can tell me.”

“Curiouser and curiouser…” replied Clara, intrigued. “Through the looking-glass, then, Doctor?”

“Through the looking-glass, indeed, Clara … you’ve no idea,” he said. The Doctor tapped in some coordinates and mumbled to himself, “Year One Hundred Nine A.D., Earth, Italy, Rome … Palatine Hill. I just hope I’ve got the right house ….” He flipped the drive lever, and the TARDIS whirred and hummed into life, flinging them backwards two thousand years into the past.

 

******

  

Lobus Caecilius, marble merchant and sculptor, white-haired, wrinkled, and 71 years old, lay dying.

He was alone, stretched out on a low platform bed in a quiet corner of his Roman villa, a soft linen blanket draped over his thin body. Although it was summer, he shivered, trembling, fighting for each breath, on what he was certain was his last night alive on Earth. The miner’s sickness had claimed him at last; decades of exposure to fine marble dust had destroyed his lungs. The stone gave life and prosperity, but always took it away again, in the end … such was the way of things.

It was nearly midnight, and he could just make out a few constellations of stars twinkling through the carved wooden screen that covered his window; both mighty Orion and Sirius were keeping him company tonight. A warm, gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the olive trees outside, and night insects hummed lazily in the branches. A silver water goblet, pitcher, and oil lamp sat on the table next to him. The lamp’s dim blue flame cast flickering shadows on the mural-covered walls, making the muses painted there dance in the dying firelight. A small white moth fluttered dangerously close to fire, challenging death.

His family members were asleep in other rooms – his beloved wife of fifty years, Metella; his daughter Evelina and her husband, and his son Quintus, the physician, and his wife. His grandchildren and three tiny great-grandchildren cuddled contentedly with their parents in rooms across the courtyard from his own.

Caecilius’ body was weak, but his mind was clear, and he refused to sleep, for fear that if he closed his eyes, it would be for the last time. He kept himself awake by wondering if anyone would remember him when he was gone to dust, and what Mercury would look like when he came to escort him to the underworld. Well, he’d find out, soon enough.

He thought about his family, and looked back over his long life as a successful marble merchant, grateful for the wealth that he would be able to pass on to future generations. Caecilius felt content in his life’s work, for he had supplied stone and sculptures to emperors (Titus was indeed proud of his marble granaries in Alexandria!), to governors and noblemen…. And.

And. There was that one week -- the strangest week of his life -- when, unbeknownst to him at the time, he had provided marble carvings to demons and gods, and the world had exploded in rage and fire and ash.

Caecilius had few regrets, but there was one that he wished with all his heart to rectify. Only now, he thought, it was far too late for regrets of any kind. He sighed, and turned his head to gaze at the stone tablet on the wall, on which the carved likenesses of his household gods, Medicus Tempus Decimus-Spartacus and Donna Londinia Nobilis-Spartacus, stood out in sharp relief.

“Thank you, Lord Doctor, thank you Donna,” he whispered, his voice raspy and weak. It was a prayer he had spoken every night and every morning for thirty years; a twice-daily ritual of gratitude for the Celtic-speaking, sibling god and goddess who had saved his family on the day Vesuvius exploded, when the sky toppled, and his entire world had burned. The day mighty Vulcan had rained down wrath and death and the fires of hell itself upon Pompeii, destroying everyone and everything he had ever known.

Caecilius had feared that the Doctor and Donna had abandoned him and his family to suffocate and burn, that all hope was lost, and he had kissed his children goodbye. Miraculously, they’d come back. The lord of time and his sister goddess had been merciful that day; they had returned to shelter his family inside a wooden blue temple of impossible size inside, and rescued them.

Sometimes the memory of that day seemed like a hallucination – like some kind of fevered fantasy created in the terrible last moments of a dying mind. But Caecililus was here, the generations of his family were here, and Pompeii wasn’t; proof enough that ridiculous miracles were possible. Proof enough that sometimes you got lucky; some days, when the winds stood fair and the Doctor came to call, the gods were real, and they took mercy upon you, and you lived.

“I only wish I could thank you in person,” thought Caecilius. He had been in such a state of shock and grief and terror that he hadn’t properly thanked them at the time. Since that fateful, horrible day he had done his best to supplicate them in his prayers, and hoped with all his heart that they heard him.

“Wherever you are, in your temple of size on the inside, please, hear my prayers, o great ones. When I am gone, please watch over my family as you did that day,” he said aloud.

At that very moment, a loud wheezing, groaning sound filled the room -- a sound he hadn’t heard in thirty years. Surely his addled, failing brain was imagining things? A bright light flashed and filled the room, blinding him temporarily, and he turned his head away and squeezed his eyes shut tight. When he opened them again, a wooden blue temple not much bigger than a man, with strange writing and a lantern on top, stood in the corner of his room where an amphora on a stand had been moments before. He’d rather liked that amphora, but was too stunned at the moment to think of it for more than an instant.

A man and woman (god and goddess?), their hands clasped together, stepped out the door of the temple. But they were not his household gods. Who – or what—were they? 

Caecilius stared in shock and fear at the face of the man (the god?) who had emerged from the blue temple, for the man/god bore a very familiar face. _His face_ , but about twenty years younger. It was like looking at his reflection in a polished bronze mirror or perfectly still water … worse still, it was as though his echo had come to life and stepped out of the mirror and into the land of the living. Was this Mercury, son of Jupiter, come take him to the underworld? Were they here to harm him?

“Who…” Caecilius gasped, shaking with fear, and pulled his blanket up to his chin for protection. “What are you? Are you Mercury?” he coughed. “What do you want? Where’s my physician … am I dying now? I’m delirious … I must be dreaming …” he coughed again, violently this time, and his voice trailed off.

“Caecilius. It’s me. You’re safe.” The Doctor’s voice was low and soothing, a comforting rumble of distant thunder. “I’m the Doctor –”

Caecilius looked both skeptical, and awed. “The Doctor? Doctor who?” he challenged, his voice raspy.

The Doctor continued, “The one who saved you from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius thirty years ago. Yes. That Doctor. The same. I look different now, but it’s me,” he said gently. “I’ve come back. I have something to say to you.”

Caecilius calmed down a little, but arched an eyebrow, studying him. When the Doctor arched a mirror-image eyebrow back at him, it was terribly unnerving.

It was, of course, natural for gods to change their faces at will – Jupiter was notorious for it. Caecilius had also heard tales from the Jewish people, who believed in a single great god who had created mankind in his own image. But what did it mean when a god bore the likeness of _your_ image? Surely this was the ultimate act of sacrilege, daring to imagine that one of the gods looked like oneself. Caecilius moaned with grief and covered his face with his hands in shame. He dared not look upon them further.

“Caecilius. Please … look at me,” said the Doctor. “I know this must seem very strange, but trust me, you’re safe. We’re not going to harm you.”

Not wishing to defy a god, especially not the one to whom he owed his very life, Caecilius lowered his hands. He stared at them then, studying the immortals who – he still couldn’t believe it -- stood in his room.

The Doctor-god-who-looked-like-him was dressed head to toe in dark, heavy clothing with a flash of fire lining his … tunic? Caecilius wasn’t sure what to call the strange garment, but who was he, a mere mortal, to question the raiment of the gods?

Standing next to him was a short, beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman. She had a confident bearing, held her head high, and wore a black and red woven dress that would be considered very risqué by modern Roman standards. He wondered who she was … the god’s consort, perhaps? The expression on her face was as stunned and confused as Caecilius’ own, and she looked back and forth between him and the Doctor, as though not believing her own eyes. Which was odd, come to think of it … didn’t goddesses see everything, and know everything?

So … she was human, then? Or a demi-god? What was she?

By the way she carried herself, she was most certainly the Doctor’s equal, whatever she was. Caecilius could tell, too, by the way they glanced fondly at each other and the way they held each other’s hands that they were clearly a couple. So, not his consort, then: his queen, perhaps.

“Hello Caecilius,” she said gently, a look of deep compassion in her eyes, and stepped forward into the lamplight. “I’m Clara.”

Clara, meaning “the bright one,” thought Caecilius; well she was certainly that, at least in the eyes of this god, the Doctor.

“Hello…” Caecilius hesitated, and he coughed again, his throat gone dry. Clara reached for the silver goblet on the table, poured water into it from the nearby pitcher, and lifted it to his lips, smiling encouragingly. He drank.

When she set down the goblet, he asked, “What do you want of me, an unworthy servant, o great gods?”

“Seriously?” said Clara to the Doctor, incredulous. “He thinks you’re some kind of god?”

“Shut up,” the Doctor replied, glaring at her. “Occupational hazard, et cetera, et cetera....” he waved a hand in the air.

“ _He’s speaking Celtic!_ ” thought Caecilius. It really was him -- the Doctor -- after all.

Clara rolled her eyes at the Doctor and pursed her lips, but didn’t talk again.

The Doctor sighed and turned to Caecilius, but his tone was kind. “Please, don’t call me that. I’m just a friend.” He smiled a thin smile. “And not a very good one, I’m afraid. Caecilius, I never did thank you….” He hesitated, composing his thoughts. “I just wanted to say thank you.”

“For what, Lord Doctor?” Caecilius asked.

"For saving me,” said the Doctor.

“What? I… I don’t understand,” Caecilius replied, disbelieving. “ _You_ saved _us_. It is I who thank _you_ for your mercy,” he paused, struggling for breath. “I pray to you every day with gratitude for my family and my life. Do you not hear my prayers, o great god?” The Doctor frowned. Caecilius corrected himself hastily, “Sorry. I mean, do you not hear my prayers, my Lord?” 

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but Clara smacked him on the arm and interrupted quickly, before he could say something stupid.

“Of course he hears you, and he remembers you,” she said. “Every time he looks in a mirror.” The Doctor was about to interrupt again, but Clara scowled at him, and he kept his mouth shut. 

“What do you mean, I saved you, Doctor?” Caecilius asked. “I still don’t understand.”

The Doctor knelt down by Caecilius’ side, and spoke softly to him. “It means, old friend, that you saved me from myself. Well, you and Donna did. This face I wear – your face, Caecilius -- reminds me that every person matters. It keeps me humble. It reminds me of those I’ve lost, and that I must never travel alone.” The Doctor looked lovingly up at Clara, and reached up to squeeze her hand. She returned his gaze, and caressed his palm with her thumb.

“Q.E.D., ergo…” the Doctor began….

“I still don’t speak Celtic, Doctor,” Caecilius said, and another coughing fit overcame him.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows questioningly, but then his expression turned to recognition as he remembered that whenever he spoke in Latin it sounded Celtic to the Romans, and he chuckled.

“Right. Sorry,” the Doctor continued. “What I mean to say is that Clara’s right. Every time I look in the mirror, I remember.”

Caecilius just stared at him for a moment, unsure of what to say. “Doctor,” he said, gasping, his voice faltering. “I never did thank you, when you saved us. I’m dying now, and I’m so glad that I can die knowing I got the chance to thank you in person. Thank you, Doctor. For my life, and my family’s life. Thank you.” His voice was barely a whisper. “And please tell your sister for me, too. Is she well?”

“Sister?” asked Clara, and raised an eyebrow at the Doctor.

“He means Donna.” The Doctor looked very sad then, but said, “Yes. She is well. And happy. Thank you for remembering her.”

The purpose of his visit complete, the Doctor stood to leave, but turned back to Caecilius, who was barely conscious now. He placed a hand on the dying man’s temple, and spoke softly, “Be at peace, old friend.”

Caecilius gazed into the Doctor’s eyes, and smiled weakly, his whole body relaxing.  “…thank you Doctor…thank…” his eyes shining with happiness, he closed them one last time, and breathed his last breath.

Tears shone in the Doctor’s eyes as he turned back towards the TARDIS. He led Clara inside, holding tightly to her hand.

 

******

 

Once they were back inside the console room, the Doctor flung himself down onto his leather wingback chair and slumped forward, his head in his hands. Clara stood close to him, tenderly caressing the back of his shoulders with her fingertips. He didn’t shy away but instead let her comfort him. She could feel that he was trembling all over, shaking with long-buried grief, and she was genuinely concerned for him. 

Clara had no idea that the Doctor had copied his face from this ancient Earth Roman, or why. He’d never told her the story of Pompeii, or that Timelords could even do such a thing as duplicate another being’s appearance. It reminded her yet again that he was an alien from the oldest civilized planet in the galaxy … and of the uncrossable distance between them. She gripped his shoulders a little more tightly then, feeling his living warmth under her hands, and shoved the thought away. 

Clara did understand one thing about this strange turn of events -- why they had come to see Caecilius and not Donna. The Doctor had told Clara of Donna's sad fate, as both a memorial and a warning to all future companions, including her. Caecilius was, apparently, the closest thing to Donna that he dared get near. Donna was the one who deserved to be thanked, but, tragically, that just wasn’t possible.

The Doctor took a shuddering breath, gripped the arms of the chair tightly, and said quietly, “I did it. It was my fault….”

“Did what?”

“I … well, Donna and I, we caused it…but it was me. I triggered the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.”

“What?” she asked, stunned. When he didn’t look up at her or answer, she knelt down in front of the chair at his feet, and tried to make eye contact.

She covered his left hand with her palm, and stroked his thumb with her own. “Tell me, Doctor. What happened…?”

Finally, he looked at her, an expression of deep sorrow etching his face. “It was one of those catastrophic days … those days that seem to follow me wherever I go. We had to make a choice, Clara. The most terrible choice. Between the future of the entire human race and twenty thousand innocent people of Pompeii.

“But you saved him. His family,” she said, soothing, understanding.

He shook his head. “I almost didn’t. I almost got it wrong. It was Donna who did it. She begged me. She was my conscience that horrific day.” He looked off into the distance, remembering. “We thought we were going to die, and she held my hands as we destroyed the world together.” He sighed, rubbed his eyes again, and bit his right thumb. He looked utterly defeated.

“But … his face?  I mean … your face? What does it mean?”

“It means, Clara, that I share your human superpower of forgetting. Everything looks small from a distance, even the stars, and I never want to think of any of you as small.” He gestured to himself. “It’s a bit harder to ignore your own face, so here I am.” 

Clara looked thoughtful for a moment. “You never told him. You never told Caecilius that you did it … that you had no choice.”

“I didn’t think he’d understand.”

“Are you sure it’s not because you want him to keep worshipping you…”

“No!” The Doctor looked shocked. “How could you think that? Never. Never that." He shook his head again. "True, I am guilty of the great sin of hubris, but not this time. He was dying. He deserved a moment of peace."

“You’re ashamed,” she said, her heart breaking a little for him. "Even though all your choices were bad ones, you still blame yourself."

“Yes.”

Clara was quiet. “You never told me. About your face. About Pompeii.”

“I am telling you now. I’m showing you, yet again, what this life of mine – of ours-- means, Clara. Do you understand? You must … we must … never travel alone, Clara. Never. There’s too much at stake.”

She nodded.

“Do you hate my face now?” he asked, resigned. It was almost a statement rather than a question.

Clara reached up and put a hand on the Doctor’s cheek, and gazed into his piercing blue eyes, her expression a mixture of love, wonder, and admiration. 

“Your face is the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen, Doctor.” She caressed a fingertip across his eyebrow, down his nose, then brushed it across his lips. His breath hitched in his throat. “You chose well,” she said.

He gazed into her eyes, gratitude and relief softening his features. In the next instant, Clara leaned forward, and kissed him softly on the lips. She leaned back and studied the stunned but happy expression on his face, and smiled.

“You’re a good man, Doctor,” she said, interlacing her fingers with his own and squeezing his hands.

“I’ve had a good teachers,” he said. “Thank you Clara Oswald. My Clara.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Medicus Tempus Decimus-Spartacus translates roughly as: "Tenth Doctor of Time - Spartacus", and Donna Londinia Nobilis-Spartacus as: "Noblewoman of London - Spartacus".


End file.
